Popular Opinion The Best Beatles Songs

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List Rules Best songs recorded by The Beatles. No solo songs from Beatles members.

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List of best songs ever recorded by The Beatles, the iconic British rock band joining John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Between the years 1960 and 1970, the band recorded 12 studio albums and a few other scattered songs and recordings, across a diverse range of styles. The albums have all proved massively influential, particularly the band's later experiments with psychedelia, world music and conceptual long-form albums. Each member of the so-called Fab Four found later success as a solo artist (with McCartney and Starr continuing to record albums and sell out concerts to the present day), and their combined efforts are consistently ranked among the greatest rock music of all time.

Childhood friends McCartney and Lennon originally formed a band in the late '50s called The Quarrymen, and soon after brought in George Harrison as a guitarist. After playing in Hamburg, Germany, and rotating through a few other musicians, the group returned to the UK in 1962 and joined with drummer Ringo Starr (then of the band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.) By 1963, the group started releasing popular songs, including "Please Please Me" and "Love Me Do." The phenomenon of "Beatlemania," typified by mobs of young girls screaming and rioting whenever the band appeared in public, took hold this same year. A trip to the US, highlighted by an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, is commonly associated with the increasingly popularity of British music in America, often called the "British Invasion."

More successful albums followed - including the soundtrack for the Beatles' first film, "A Hard Days Night." In 1965, the band released the landmark "Rubber Soul," followed by "Revolver" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." which added a good deal of complexity to the band's previously "bubblegum" pop sound. (The Beatles would later reveal that much of the change in their sound was due to their increasing experimentation with drugs like marijuana and LSD during this period.)

The band's final two albums - "Abbey Road" and "Let It Be" - were recorded during a period of intense strife and conflict between the band members. McCartney and Lennon were infamously feuding and difficult to work with, prompting Harrison to essentially quit the band and leave the studio. (He eventually returned and brought in keyboard player Billy Preston to hopefully change the dynamic in the studio.) In 1969, Lennon released the first solo song from a Beatles member - "Give Peace a Chance," credited to the "Plastic Ono Band." (It was a reference to Lennon's new wife, Yoko Ono.) In September of that year, Lennon announced his intention to leave the group to his fellow band members.